After the renaming of Alibaba's Tongyi Qianwen APP to Tongyi APP, there are also top model APPs undergoing renaming. On September 4, Baidu official announced that ERNIE Bot APP was officially upgraded to Wenxiaoyan, positioning Baidu's "new search" intelligent assistant.
Different from other search products, Wen Xiaoyan has launched "new search" capabilities such as rich media search, multimodal input, text and image creation, and highly realistic digital humans, which can fully meet users' search, creation, and chat needs. At the same time, Wen Xiaoyan exclusively launched new features such as memory and free subscription, which are considered to be the most native and thorough AI applications combining large models in the new search field so far.
It is reported that users of Wenxiaoyan can also experience the Wenxin Big Model 4.0 capability for free from today, and it can be used throughout September.
Since its popularity last year, the big model industry has been waiting for the emergence of super apps, with AI search being one of the most promising applications. The industry generally believes that AI search is the first large-scale model application direction that can be implemented on a large scale.
Journalists have found that since last year, dozens of new and old search players at home and abroad have been deploying AI search. Overseas, OpenAI has officially released its large model search product SearchGPT; Domestically, Quark, a subsidiary of Alibaba's Intelligent Information Business Group, has also upgraded its "Super Search Box".
Baidu's anchor is "New Search". According to Baidu's understanding, in the era of AI, new search is no longer limited to traditional information retrieval functions, but should meet the multi-level needs of users in search, creation, chat, etc., with the characteristics of being more human like and understanding people. Therefore, an important criterion for defining a new search is the need for AI capabilities, including generative AI, multi round interaction, personalized interaction, intelligent agents, and other diverse functions.
Based on the cutting-edge technology of the ERNIE Bot model, Baidu has upgraded the Wenxin Yiyan APP to "new search" intelligent assistant Wenxiaoyan. At present, Wen Xiaoyan has achieved a transformation in the search industry in multiple dimensions such as search, creation, and chat. According to IDC's "Competitive Analysis of Mobile Big Model Application Market", Wen Xiaoyan's new search capability ranks first in comprehensive evaluation among similar products.
Robin Lee, the founder, chairman and CEO of Baidu, revealed on the 2024 Q2 financial report conference call that 18% of Baidu search results have been generated by AI. This proportion is still increasing to this day. According to logical deduction, the emergence of the "New Search" intelligent assistant Wen Xiaoyan, coupled with Baidu Search's new AI upgrade, is obviously conducive to consolidating Baidu Search's position.
It is reported that in this brand upgrade, Wen Xiaoyan also simultaneously launched AI functions such as rich media search, multimodal input, text and image creation, and free subscription. While lowering the search threshold, it has also increased the diversity of search forms. Users can not only perform voice search, image search, and fuzzy questioning, but also support flexible scenarios such as asking while taking photos and watching, obtaining rich multimodal results; Users can also enjoy high-quality article and image creation, and have intimate communication with hyper realistic digital humans, allowing new search to truly evolve from "instrumental" to "human".
The personalized memory function is also worth paying attention to. For example, users can achieve personalized Q&A and services based on preferences, professions, personalities, etc; The pioneering free subscription function allows users to customize and subscribe to various news, games, weather, and other interesting information, and receive content push according to customized needs. For example, if a user wants to "organize the latest technology news about AI big models and autonomous driving every Monday at noon," Wen Xiaoyan will automatically collect and organize information on time and reply on time.
It is reported that users of Wenxiaoyan can experience the Wenxin Big Model 4.0 capability for free in September. As of now, the monthly active users of the application have exceeded 10 million, with a cumulative usage of over 2 billion times. The daily active users and total duration have maintained high-speed growth on a quarterly basis. In addition, Wen Xiaoyan is particularly favored by young people, with 70% of users being young people and growing rapidly at a rate of 15% per month.
In May of this year, Alibaba upgraded its brand of Tongyi Big Model, renaming the "Tongyi Qianwen APP" to "Tongyi APP". It integrates the full stack capability of Tongyi Big Model and provides free services to all users.
According to reports at the time, the Tongyi APP was based on a prototype with performance comparable to the GPT-4 Turbo, and integrated the cutting-edge capabilities of Tongyi Laboratory, such as text, image, intelligent coding, document parsing, audio and video understanding, and visual generation, into an all-in-one AI assistant for everyone.
From the current point of view, including Baidu's "Wen Xiaoyan", ByteDance's "Doubao", Ali's "Tongyi", and the emerging KIMI, many large model products have almost all been "popularized", with a view to getting closer to the C-end market and preparing for commercialization.
However, some industry insiders believe that the commercialization path of AI search still needs to be explored, the penetration rate needs to be improved, and it will also face challenges such as changes in user habits.